November 2014

I have been working on hats for my cousins and their board and care compatriots who will be participating in some holiday festivities with us, and it has, for the most part, been going swimmingly.

But one hat, a now “finally finished” Red Heart Super Saver coffee fleck beauty, gave me a lot of trouble. While I worked the first quarter of the cap, I made many miscounts necessitating many small frogging adventures, but around the halfway point I seemed to have gotten in a groove. Everything was going right.

Well, almost everything.

Friday, when I had finished to the point that I could join the last row to the first row, I became aware of an irregularity. After looking over the hat carefully, I found my mistake, about 20 rows earlier.

In the back of my mind I could hear my mother telling me that I needed to stop acting like I would live forever and just finish the hat, and I was tempted. I really wanted to have it done, the mistake was one only I would notice, but all of the people I am making hats for are the kind of people who are often derided by society and the culture at large.

All of the things our society values: money, prestige, expensive goodies, self-determination, and accomplishments — are things that my cousins and their compatriots have none of. All they have is their humanity, and I could not bring myself to give them work that was “good enough;” I only want to give them my best.

So I frogged, first one row and then another until I had finally excised the mistake no one would notice, and I moved forward.

Here is the completed hat:

A coffee fleck seafarer’s cap

With the hat that had been bedeviling me done, I then turned my attention to a teal hat that I seemed to be able to make with very few if any errors, and shortly after I finished the coffee fleck hat, the teal was done as well:

A tale of two seafarer’s caps

All that was left was for me to trick out the peachy keen hat I had made. After a misstep with the potential flower placement, I got back on track, and here it is — all done and ready to wear:

Peachy keen seafarer’s cap with flowers

The science is in and when we are able to give we often benefit more than the person receiving the gift. As for me, I’ve still got two more hats to make!